How the Internet Happened: From Netscape to the iPhone

by Brian McCullough Narrated by Timothy Andrés Pabon

Overview

Tech guru Brian McCullough delivers a rollicking history of the internet, why it exploded, and how it changed everything.

The internet was never intended for you, opines Brian McCullough in this lively narrative of an era that utterly transformed everything we thought we knew about technology. In How the Internet Happened, he chronicles the whole fascinating story for the first time, beginning in a dusty Illinois basement in 1993, when a group of college kids set off a once-in-an-epoch revolution with what would become the first “dotcom.”

Depicting the lives of now-famous innovators like Netscape's Marc Andreessen and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, McCullough also reveals surprising quirks and unknown tales as he tracks both the technology and the culture around the internet's rise. Cinematic in detail and unprecedented in scope, the result both enlightens and informs as it draws back the curtain on the new rhythm of disruption and innovation the internet fostered, and helps to redefine an era that changed every part of our lives.

Editorial Reviews

Richard Munson

"For those of us who’ve grown up with computers and the Internet, McCullough offers an insider’s look at the unplanned and undirected romp that enabled the web to infiltrate our lives. He provides fresh perspectives on the famous names – including Gates, Page, Jobs and Zuckerberg – but, more entertainingly, introduces the lesser-known geniuses, like Sean Parker with Napster and Plaxo, as well as the academic godfathers, such as J.C.R. Licklider of ARPA. McCullough sprinkles his well-told tale with trivia nuggets, such as the first web advertisement being for a Silicon Valley law firm, and he shows how success resulted from some combination of timing, brilliance, and an uncanny awareness that consumers want unlimited selection and instant gratification. How the Internet Happened is a fast-paced and enjoyable perspective on our lives, as well as a compelling exploration for how humanity and computers came together in profound ways."

Chris Anderson

"Brian McCullough vividly recounts the brilliant hunches, happy accidents, and fortuitous timing that converged to create the first 25 years of the internet era. Even for those of us who lived through it, it's astonishing to step back and realize the scale of the changes in human habits, communication, and society as a whole that have occurred in just one generation."

Jon Gertner

"Mr. McCullough takes a broader view, showing how a handful of powerful companies—all of them American, in his telling—came to dominate web technology. In his story, the internet didn’t happen only because of wizardly coding and cheaper computers. It also happened because of serendipity, failure, friendships and blood feuds.... Such historical tidbits help us see that today’s tech titans didn’t arrive on the scene as superhuman."

Brian Merchant

"How the Internet Happened is destined to become the definitive text on how the web became big business—and came to dominate every facet of our lives, from communication to commerce. Painstakingly researched and deftly written, McCullough gives us a comprehensive guide to the startups and CEOs who ushered in the internet age."

Carl Hays

"Along with profiling the internet’s key players, from Bill Gates to Mark Zuckerberg, McCullough provides an entertaining and informative technological history which computer geeks and readers interested in everything from sociology to business and media will relish."

JANUARY 2019 - AudioFile

McCullough's history of technology focuses on the intersection of the personal computer and the network, predominantly focusing on the launch of internet networks (Netscape, AOL, Prodigy) and ending with the rise of todays' big-tech players (Amazon, Google, Apple). Narrator Timothy Andrés Pabon's voice provides a sense of wonder and enthusiasm, which capture the overwhelmingly sunny tone of McCullough's prose. However, his energy is not equally distributed, and there are some passages where the narration falls flat. McCullough's work will strike chords of nostalgia for those who stumbled onto the web in the 1980s and ‘90s while providing a strong understanding for those who missed the rise but enjoy the ubiquity of the internet in the 21st century. L.E. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

★ 2018-07-31

The internet was not meant for the likes of us—and yet we have it, through means that tech historian McCullough capably recounts in this wide-ranging history of the internet era.

It wasn't so long ago that technologists dismissed the thought that ordinary mortals would have a use for a computer and not so long ago that the internet was a skeletal version of its present self, confined to computers administered by the military-industrial complex. Chalk the change up, writes the author, to the opening of the net to civilian traffic—and then to techies at the University of Illinois who, building on earlier platforms, launched the first browser in 1993, early on called X Mosaic "because it was designed to work with X Window, a graphical user interface popular with users of Unix machines." If any of the terms in the preceding clause are mysterious, then this book may prove tough slogging, but it has plenty of odd drama. For example, Bill Gates came calling on what later became Netscape, hoping to build an alliance; when rebuffed, he retooled Microsoft in order to build a browser of its own, having quickly divined how important the internet would become. McCullough's story is populated by numerous geeky heroes, notable among them Steve Jobs but most far less familiar, along with some free-riders and businesspeople who realized that the internet's free gift to the world was something that could be turned into a cash cow. Writes the author, "the Internet might have been launched in Silicon Valley, but to a large extent, it was monetized by startups in New York City." Most of the individual components of McCullough's story, which closes with the arrival of the "completely, conceptually perfect" iPhone in 2007, are well-documented, but few other histories of modern technology connect them so fluently. In this, the narrative resembles Steven Levy's by now ancient Hackers (1984) and John Markoff's more recent What the Dormouse Said (2005); it compares favorably to both.

A tasty, educational treat for tech heads and other web denizens.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169868456
Publisher:	Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Publication date:	10/23/2018
Edition description:	Unabridged

Videos